Google Diversity Report Shows Little Progress for Women and People of Color

Google released its seventh consecutive diversity report on Thursday, revealing modest gains in representation for women and people of color, and a disproportionately white, Asian and male workforce.

The percentage of black hires in the U.S. grew from 4.8% in 2018 to 5.5% in 2019, a .7% increase. The percentage of black hires in technical roles also grew by .7%, the largest increase in the share of black technical hires since Google first started publishing diversity data. Latinx employees, on the other hand, saw a dip in hiring, dropping from 6.8% in 2018 to 6.6% in 2019. The percentage of Latinx employees in technical roles increased by a mere .2%.

Female employees didn’t fare much better, dropping from 33.2% of global hires in 2018 to 32.5% in 2019. Over that same time period, the percentage of women hired for technical positions remained at about 25.6%—a far cry from gender parity. {snip}

As in previous years, women continued to have a lower than average attrition rate in 2019, while Latinx attrition in the U.S. dipped below the Google average. Attrition was highest for Native Americans and increased significantly for black women.

Overall, Google’s workforce representation—defined as hiring minus attrition—saw a slight uptick for most underrepresented groups. Black and Latinx employees represented 9.6% of the U.S. workforce in 2019, up from 9% in 2018, and women represented 32% of Google’s global workforce, up from 31.6%.

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{snip} Through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, the company committed $10 million to support low-income students and students of color in Bay Area STEM classrooms in 2019.

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